Pages

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

I have said before that I think that all 3 of Fantasy Flights Star Wars role-playing games should have been released as one game with 3 distinct campaign settings.

Rather than talk (or rant depending on who you ask) more about that, instead I wanted to share another thought I had that was related.

I love graphic design and all things pretty, so.... If Fantasy Flight had chosen to release a single Star Wars role-playing game, with 3 distinct campaign settings, what could they have done for a logo or logos?

My first thought was to go with a retro look, then I did a some looking at images and decided I really like the Clone Wars logo box. I created this.

That was cool, but before I was even done with that (I finished it anyway obviously) I saw some other work that caught my eye. Now, I don't know who the original artist was or I would credit them for their inspiration (I tried to figure out who created this but came up empty handed). The original works can be seen here and here. They were so pretty I decided to emulate them in style.
I created these and I love them.

That's all. I just wanted to share more of my creations with you all.
feel free to re-use them if you'd like (credit is nice but i'f you can't figure out the original author, I totally understand ;).

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Added Career Specialization and Signature ability trees from Desperate Allies to the Diplomat pdf.

Desperate Allies stands out above most of the other career specialization books.
It stands out not because of added glitz or glam, nor because of any cheap trickery or fan service.

Desperate Allies stands out on the merit of its fantastic theming throughout all its various parts.
The three new races are neat. The Neomoidians are a great thematic choice considering the capacities that we have seen them in in the movies and shows like Clone Wars. people won't be as familiar with the other two choices the Caamasi and Gossam. The Gossam and Caamasi are still built and described pretty well so that I could easily see choosing one of them to play a social-type character. Special note: the Caamasi special power sounds totally cool and really fun.

The new talent tree options of: Advocate, Analyst and Propagandist do a really nice job of helping to round out the Diplomat career trees while still staying on point with the mostly social nature of being a Diplomat. The new trees add variety and spice to the Diplomat career without power creeping too much and while still staying on theme.

The two new Diplomat signature abilities are on point. that is to say, they stay thematic and are definitely interesting. That said, the signature abilities are where my only complaints with this book lay.
The first signature ability Diplomatic Solution i think makes it far too easy for one character to completely usurp the roles and abilities of potentially the entire rest of the group. I know at my game in a party of 6 at least 3 characters are more or less geared toward some aspect of combat. This means that those players are looking forward to fighting something so they can make use of and show off their skills. Those fighters will be, at minimum, disappointed if some other character is constantly robbing them of those opportunities.
weird analogy time = Good abilities should put the spotlight on your character NOT remove the other characters from the stage.
the second signature ability Unmatched Insight is really cool and definitely useful for a social based character.... buuuut.. i think it dips more than just a toe into what should be the realm of the Force. GMs and players need to be careful to make sure that characters aren't gaining preternatural knowledge from this power. Assuming you can't gain any preternatural knowledge from this power, I imagine this would be a VERY difficult power for the GM to deal with and potentially a disappointing power for the player to use.

Weapons, Armor and Gear all makes sense. No power creep, most stays on theme, some of it potentially useful.
some extra protocol droid options for purchasing or using as opposition.
Ship options make sense and have more cool "additional rules" (which is a format i like because of how it differentiates the ships).

there is a cool section in the back about setting up a rebel base and upgrading it. while this is slightly less thematic than the rest of the material, i could easily see working it so that your social characters (diplomats) are the people responsible for acquiring these sorts of things. plus, who doesn't love to have a cool base. not all of the base are belong to empire.

so yeah... this book was pretty good. all around happy with it. hope more of the books see this kind of quality.